Last week Shirley Bond, both the Minister of Jobs, Tourism and Skills Training and the Minister for Responsible Labour announced that the B.C. provincial government was accepting all 43 recommendations in the Gordon Macatee’s report in the WorkSafeBC review and action plan.
These recommendations will provide even further improvement in the control of combustible dust in sawmills and hope to provide improvement in many non-compliant wood manufacturing manufacturers.
The review and action plan is one of many initiatives that have taken place since the explosion and fire at the Babine Forest Products sawmill right here in Burns Lake and the Lakeland sawmill in Prince George two-years-ago.
Two workers died and 20 were injured in the explosion and fire in Burns Lake.
These recommendations will hopefully help provide improved working conditions and safer working conditions so a tragedy like this doesn’t happen again.
The mill explosion and fire devastated this community, yet through hard work, perseverance and extremely positive attitudes from community members the mill has been rebuilt and reopened.
Now, despite all that this community has been through we are being asked to once again assume all the risk on something that could potentially be even more devastating than the mill explosion was to this community.
Enbridge is trying to get their pipeline that will transport bitumen through our community and we all know the environmental concerns that surround this issue.
However, a second and just as harmful option sits there as a backup plan should the pipeline fail to be built.
This would see the oil transported by rail from Alberta to the pacific coast.
An additional 100 car train per hour would go through Burns Lake, which sees our rail road tracks travel right through the heart of our town, past our local businesses and by our high school.
Each car would have the capacity to hold 25,071 imperial gallons of combustible oil.
That equates to approximately two and a half million gallons of oil going through Burns Lake every hour.
What should happen if this train derails?
Look at what happened in a small Quebec town just over a year ago.
A train carrying oil derailed in the small town of Lac-Megnatic, Quebec and when the oil on the train explode it cost the lives of 47 people and destroyed more than half of the town’s downtown business centre.
Not only is this town being asked to allow these trains to pass through at very little advantage to us, but our volunteer firefighters, are being asked to be first responders and put themselves in incredible danger should a situation arise.
When is our community going to stop being asked to assume all the risk so big industry can reap the benefits?
This community has been through so much and has proven to be so resilient, but can we really be expected to keep picking ourselves off the canvas when we’re consistently being knocked down?
Lac-Megnatic is still cleaning up from the derailment, let’s not allow that to happen to Burns Lake.